Smarty Cooking School: Halibut in Papillote

Did that French word Papillote scare you off? Don’t let it. It just means parchment. I am going to teach you a super easy way to cook almost anything, in a packet. You have probably done this already at Girl Scout camp where you would throw some veggies and a piece of meat in some tin foil , wrap it up and toss in the campfire. This is not that different, in fact if the parchment paper scares you off you can totally use that awesome tin foil you have sitting in your pantry.

I was having my neighbors over this week for dinner and wanted to make something easy and healthy. I wanted to cook fish. This is by far the easiest way I have come across to cook amazingly delicious fish.

You are making a little packet that will steam your food. You can put any variation of veggies and protein in there and wrap it up. I found some beautiful Halibut at Whole foods I wanted to try. I also had just acquired this super cool veggie cutting tool called a GEFU Spirelli Spiral Cutter. It makes ribbons of carrots, cucumbers and just about anything else you can shove in there. I made zucchini and squash ribbons. You could actually make “veggie Pasta” if you wanted to cut out your carbs.

I had some other things on hand that you see below. Some onion, garlic, basil, red pepper, lemon and grape tomatoes. Yum.

So the concept is that you layer on a heart shaped piece of parchment ( if you want to be fancy , if not a rectangular piece will do just fine also) Veggies go down first, then I like to place my fish on top. Pretty. Sprinkle the tomatoes around the top then drizzle a little good quality olive oil and some white wine (just so happens I had some already open) salt and pepper the fish then seal the packet. Watch this if you want to see how to wrap the packets in the fancy French way.

It really is as simple as that. I used 6 ounce Halibut filets for this dish and cooked the packets on a baking sheet at 400 degrees for approximately 15 min. I wanted to make sure the fish was cooked all the way through. Serve them on plates and let your guests unwrap their delicious gastronomical presents. Serve with some crusty bread to soak up the juices. It is as easy and simple as that. See how happy my guests look?